“There should be a class on sex education, a real sex-education class.There should be a class on police brutality. There should be a class on apartheid. There should be a classon why people are hungry. But there are not. There are classes on gym. Physical education. Let's learn volleyball.”​-Shakur, Age 17

About Amaru Univeristy

Amaru University, posthumously named after Tupac Amaru Shakur was founded in 2017 by Philly native, Desiree Robinson. In 1988, Tupac Shakur was interviewed at the young age of 17. During this interview, he was asked about his view on education in which Shakur stated the following :

" Well…I hope that I don’t get in trouble, but um. School is, I think that we got so caught up in school being a tradition that we stopped using it as a learning tool, which it should be. Up to this day. I mean school should be, I think there should be a different curriculum in each and every like neighborhood you know. Because I’m going to Tamalpais High and I’m learning about the basics, but they’re not basic for me, you know. They’re not, to get us ready for today’s world. They’re not, that’s not helping. It’s just what they took, so that’s what we’re gonna take. So that’s why the streets have taught me. And um.But school is really important. Reading, writing, arithmetic. But I think after you learn reading, writing, arithmetic, that’s it. But what they tend to is teach you reading, writing, and arithmetic then teach you reading, writing, and arithmetic again then again then again, just make it harder and harder, just to keep you busy. And that’s where I think they messed up. There should be a class on drugs. There should be a class on sex education, a real sex education class. Not just pictures and diaphragms and unlogical terms and things like that. There should be a drug class, there should be sex education, there should be a class on scams, there should be a class on religious cult, there should be a class on police brutality, there should be a class on apartheid , there should be on racism in america, there should be a class on why people are hungry, but there's not, there’s class on gym, you know, physical education, let’s learn volleyball. Because one day…you know…there’s classes like algebra where I’ve yet to go to a store and gone xy+2 and give me my y change back thank you. I think you can let me out, I’ve lived alone by myself. And the things that helped me were the things I learned from my mother, from the streets.Reading has helped me, I mean, schools taught me reading, which is, I love. Reading, writing and arithmetic, that’s it. Like foreign languages, I think they’re important, but I don’t think they should be required. Because…actually they should be teaching you English. And then teaching you how to understand double-talk, politicians double-talk. Not teaching you how to understand French, and Spanish and German. When am I going to Germany! I can’t afford rent in America. How am I going to Germany. This is what I mean by the basics aren’t the basics for me.And [what i think is] like college you can go and take the classes that you want. I think that Elementary school should be that way. Where they give you the classes you take, for the basics. And then Junior High School and High School should be the classes that you need to, in order to choose your path. It’s just a place you go during the day to keep you busy while they’re at work…We’re not being taught to deal with the world as is it is. We’re being taught to deal with this fairy land that we’re not even living in anymore. And it’s sad. Because it’s me telling you. And it should not be me telling you."

Amaru University is a digital learning and resource center. It provides an array of learning materials such as : lectures, interviews, panels, articles, book lists and different resources within the community where the youth and even adults can go to learn even more and put their thoughts into action.

The Amazing True Stories Behind Tupac's Name

"Túpac Amaru I was the final independent lord of the Inca and a staunch opponent of many things the Spanish invaders brought with them. At the time, what remained of the Inca lands was in serious trouble. When the Spaniards came in the sixteenth century, two royal brothers, Atahualpa and Huascar, were engaged in a civil war over their ancestral lands, a conflict which their father, the emperor, had set in motion when he split his domains in two for his kids. Atahualpa won in 1532, but was soon executed by the brutal invader Francisco Pizarro (you may remember him from middle school “explorer” lessons).

Túpac Amaru I is executed by the SpaniardsForty years later, the Spaniards had made great inroads in making the Incan lands their own. A final pocket of resistance did hold out, however, under our pal Túpac, dubbed “the last Inca.” Despite his best efforts to hold off the incoming conquistadores, however, Túpac was captured and executed in 1572 in Cuzco.

Hit ‘Em Up (With Rebellion)Perhaps the most famous historical Túpac, though, was the self proclaimed Túpac Amaru II, who led a massive revolution against the Spanish usurpers in 1780. Claiming descent from Túpac Amaru I, Túpac Amaru II (born José Gabriel Condorcanqui) rallied the peasants, South American-born individuals of European descent, and those of mixed heritage to rebel in Peru and what is now Bolivia. That area had a huge indigenous population, which had become understandably enraged, to put it mildly, at their oppression and conquest of their land.

Although he was primarily known as a revolutionary, this ‘Pac wasn’t only a warrior; in 177, he went to Lima to plead for the indigenous peoples in his region be exempt from forced labor in the mines of Potosí. But on November 4, 1780, Túpac Amaru II seized the local corregidor–an important Spanish official–and executed him a few days later.

Túpac Amaru IIDressed in traditional Incan garb, Túpac then decreed to his native province of Tinta that all slaves were free; he also declared his intention to rebel against the Spanish. He envisioned a land in which all peoples of South America lived together in harmony, pushing out the European invaders. Such actions set up a flame that blazed across the Andes, prompting individuals to burn their overlords’ estates and mills in a show of defiance.

Túpac Amaru II wasn’t able to win everyone, especially elites of Incan descent, to his cause, and the rebellion came to an end in 1781. Captured by Spanish forces, Túpac and his immediate family were executed on May 18 in Cuzco, an eerie echo of the death of his namesake. His legacy lived on, however, in later Latin American independence movements. "

Written by Carly SIlver, Historybuff.com

Tupac Amaru Shakur

Tupac began life as Lesane Parish Crooks in Harlem, New York, on June 16, 1971. His mother, Alice Faye Williams, was the daugher of a North Carolina maid and a high-school dropout who changed her name to Afeni Shakur after becoming actively involved with the Black Panther Party; she also renamed young Lesane Parish as Tupac Amaru, after an 18th-century Peruvian revolutionary who was killed by the Spanish. She had become pregnant with her son in 1970 while on bail after being charged with conspiring to set off a race war — Afeni was acquitted the following year after successfully defending herself in court, displaying a gift for oration that her son would inherit.​Tupac Shakur was a sensitive, precociously talented yet troubled soul who came to embrace the 1990s gangsta-rap aesthetic and paid the ultimate price — he was gunned down in Las Vegas on September 7, 1996 and died six days later. His murder has never been solved. He began his music career as a rebel with a cause — to articulate the travails and injustices endured by many African-Americans, often from a male point of view. His skill in doing so made him a spokesperson not just for his own generation, but for subsequent ones who continue to face the same struggle for equality. In death he became an icon that we would never forget and always love. ​​